Disney Infinity Lays Out Road Map Of Slow Death

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The famous overlord of joy and money known to mortals as Disney has set out a plan for discontinuing its Disney Infinity [official site] series. While the Steam and console versions will continue to function, the online elements will stop working, meaning you won’t be able to download or upload new content. I know you don’t care, but your 7-year-old daughter might.

Disney announced in May that it would be stopping production of the ‘toys to life’ franchise. It had been their answer to the popular Skylanders series by Activision, in which kids buy toys, plug them into a plastic stand connected to their consoles at home and watch as the heroes miraculously appear inside their videogame machines. Infinity was the same concept, using Disney’s endless roster of characters to ensnare the kids. However, unlike the console versions, the PC version never had the toy side of things. Instead, you had to buy Johnny Depp from a digital storefront, without a toy, like you would usually.

The road map for the series is now a sad list of discontinuations and removals. You can see the whole palaver below but the main point is that by March 3 next year there won’t be any online elements for the game – no downloading, no sharing, no mates. That goes for all platforms from PC to consoles to Android. You will still be able to play the console version, just without the online bits like multiplayer. I mean, your 7-year-old daughter will still be able to.

As of today (July 29, 2016)
• No in-game purchases can be made within the PC, Steam version of Disney Infinity 2.0, iOS, Google Android, Amazon Android and Apple TV versions of the game as this feature has now been removed
• You can continue to make in-game purchases within the Steam version of Disney Infinity 3.0.As of September 30, 2016
• You will no longer be able to log in to play the PC, iOS, Google Android and Amazon Android versions of Disney Infinity, these will no longer be available on the respective app stores
• The Steam versions of Disney Infinity 2.0 & 3.0 will remain operational with the exception of all online services and community features as these will be discontinued.
• Apple TV versions of Disney Infinity will be removed from the AppStore
• The Disney Infinity Community team will no longer be reviewing or approving any new Toy Boxes that are submitted to Disney for all console, mobile and PC versions of the game. However if you are playing on any console, Apple TV or Windows 8/10 versions of the game, you can continue to download your favorite Toy Boxes from the Community Content section until March 3, 2017As of January 3, 2017
• No in-game purchases can be made within the Windows 8/10 versions of the game as this feature will be removedAs of March 3, 2017
• Apple TV and Windows 8/10 versions will no longer be available, supported or playable
• All Disney Infinity online services and community features for all versions will be discontinued

On top of all this, the developer behind the series, Avalanche Software, has also been closed, marking an end for Disney as a publisher.

Will the lack of new heroes and toys ruin the fun for the kids? I don’t know. Please translate your child’s incoherent feral mutterings into the comment field below.

Regardless of what any of this implies, on *all* PC versions, the moment you can no longer log in, the game in all forms is dead. They’ve done nothing to enable offline single player in any fashion. That means unless something radical changes (which no announcement says will happen), all PC versions are dead as of September 30th.

Rather not pleased about this, as my daughter was just getting developmentally far along enough to get a better handle on the building things, not just running her character around and jumping. I’m genuinely curious as to why it’s shutting down, I can’t imagine it was losing money, judging by the sheer number of toys coming out…

Disney’s getting out of product development and distribution in general. They’re licensing stuff to other companies to make stuff for them, and moving to shut down arms not connected to making media directly – film, TV, music, comics.

It was making money, just not ALL of the money (though still more than Skylanders apparently), and Disney corp decided that was not good enough because they could make MORE money just licensing out their IPs instead of making things themselves. At the end of the day Disney has never really cared about games, so the question “are we making something cool that people like?” it seems was not really a factor.

It’s a shame because it seemed like a really nice game, albeit primarily for people with excess money.

SO glad that Disney pulled the plug when it did. Since my son was born, I’ve been dreading the day he discovered Disney Infinity. Now I don’t have to worry anymore. (Well, not until 2018, when Disney licenses all of its properties to Lego Dimensions.)

With my family playing mainly on PC, we feel burned by this. We had 4 accounts. In one account 94 characters and 183 in total. We would not have made this investment if we knew this would happen. I imagine it being around a long time like Minecraft, WoW, etc. With it being a Disney game and many MMOs lasting a very long time, we never expected it to last only 3 years. Not a game sold the way this game was sold and the premise of “Infinity”. Now, we are at a lost. It was a great idea, but this is not the right way to treat your fans. Instead of permitting long term offline play, we are cut off losing everything. Many PC players spent a lot of money, and unlike console players we don’t even get the chance to play the vanilla version of the game anymore.